I don’t want to hear any more jokes about humanities majors like, “Do you want fries with that order?” Humanities people don’t deserve this bad rap. After all, which life style would you prefer?
Lifestyle 1: Picture an ivy-covered, university building. In a comfortable, sun lit office lined with worn, well read books, sits a professor, reading Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy In America”. Dressed in a tweed jacket, replete with suede patches, our man of letters spends his days challenging young minds. His biggest perceived problem: “Where did I put my glasses?”
Lifestyle 2: Imagine a dank, dark basement at 3 a.m. A thin, sallow faced man hunches over the dim light from his computer screen. Wired by caffeine high from coffee and Red Bull, the engineer has been up for 34 straight hours trying to debug his latest code. His biggest perceived problem: “Did I eat today?”
The paradox created by these two scenarios is that the patches on the professor’s sleeves cover the holes in his threadbare jacket because the university cut his department’s funding – again.
Conversely, the young man in the dark is working on the latest zillion MHz computer that he bought because his new Internet company is the darling of Wall Street.
There is hope for us humanities types. It comes in the form of game shows. The hope of all humanities majors lies in trivia.
But trivia is nothing new. A few years ago the nation was gripped by the parlor game Trivial Pursuit. I will never forget the first time I played it.
After dinner at a friend’s house, we divided into two groups, Boys vs. Girls. The boys were all engineers. The girls were lowly housewives, all with dusty humanities degrees. What I discovered that night was, if the question doesn’t involve equations or sports, the boys probably wouldn’t know the answer.
The first question proved my theory:
1. Name the ship of the desert. A piece of cake. The only problem was it wasn’t our turn. Too bad, because the number crunchers didn’t have a clue. I only hoped that the next question was as easy.
2. What is the oldest city in Europe? Hey, I learned that in seventh grade social studies. And so it went from: 3. Name the historical figures represented by the four kings in a deck of cards, to: 4. Who was the first baseball player to spit on his glove? Of course we missed a few.
5. The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games played. Nor did we know the answer to 6. 111,111,111 x 111,111,111= ?
The piece de resistance arrived with the last wedge of our pink pie. With the game and their pride on the line, the boys went for broke and chose science.
Regis himself couldn’t have generated the tension created when they lifted the card. As they read it I watched my husband’s face turn ashen.
“They’ve won,” he solemnly stated.
“Are you kidding me,” the other two echoed. “They couldn’t possible know that answer.”
“My wife does,” said my defeated spouse.
And I did. Why? Because not only do humanities majors know about things outside of their major, but they also listen, learn and remember.
So when asked: 7. What does Kelvin measure? I knew the answer because my husband had explained it to me while he was in graduate school.
So how many engineers does it take to change a light bulb? No one knows because engineers can’t express this in an equation; ergo, it doesn’t exist.
Wanna soda to wash down those fries?
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
For those who are interested, the answers are:
1. The camel
2. Paris
3. Spade – King David; Clubs – Alexander the Great
Hearts – Charlemagne; Diamonds – Julius Ceasar
4. This was a trick question thrown at us because the “boys” were being badly beaten.
5. The day before and after the Major League All-Star Game
6. 12,345,678,987,654,321
7. Temperature
